Somewhere along Interstate 90 there is a 300 yard concrete monument to poor preventative maintenance.
I worked for a small company in west Iowa that manufactured concrete paving equipment. Big machines. This particular baby was about 60,000 pounds of steel and hydraulics.
A contractor purchased one of our machines second hand. Since we were a small company, we generally would bend to the wishes of the customer to help with bringing the equipment online. And in this case, this contractor had scheduled a demo of this machine to the Minnesota DOT so we wanted our equipment to look good.
We had spent several days pouring concrete, making road and adjusting the machine and controls. I was involved with the design of the crown adjusting computer. Every time something wasn't quite right, the contractor blamed the crown computer. While fiddling with the controls to satisfy his ego, I noticed one of the hydraulic pressure guages was madly wiggling. I pointed this out to the contractor. I was told it didn't matter and that I didn't know anything about hydraulics. Side note: I am a mechanical engineer;)
Next day bright and early half of MDOT showed up for the demo. The dump trucks were lining up in front of the machine. Each truck carried approximately 10 yards of concrete. Well there was quite a line of trucks when the machine *sucked* a hydualic pump and destroyed the whole system. It stopped, shook and then just sat down on the gound squeezing concrete out like toothpaste. So much for the show. It lasted maybe 45 minutes.
MDOT left. The trucks dumped the their loads to the side of the road and I went home.
Slashdot Mirror
Get a motorcycle. A stock bike will blow away most anything on the road. And if the traffic backs up, split lanes!
All this for $10K or less.
But they make great back scratchers!
Mine is an old bamboo Post.
Somewhere along Interstate 90 there is a 300 yard concrete monument to poor preventative maintenance.
I worked for a small company in west Iowa that manufactured concrete paving equipment. Big machines. This particular baby was about 60,000 pounds of steel and hydraulics.
A contractor purchased one of our machines second hand. Since we were a small company, we generally would bend to the wishes of the customer to help with bringing the equipment online. And in this case, this contractor had scheduled a demo of this machine to the Minnesota DOT so we wanted our equipment to look good.
We had spent several days pouring concrete, making road and adjusting the machine and controls. I was involved with the design of the crown adjusting computer. Every time something wasn't quite right, the contractor blamed the crown computer. While fiddling with the controls to satisfy his ego, I noticed one of the hydraulic pressure guages was madly wiggling. I pointed this out to the contractor. I was told it didn't matter and that I didn't know anything about hydraulics. Side note: I am a mechanical engineer ;)
Next day bright and early half of MDOT showed up for the demo. The dump trucks were lining up in front of the machine. Each truck carried approximately 10 yards of concrete. Well there was quite a line of trucks when the machine *sucked* a hydualic pump and destroyed the whole system. It stopped, shook and then just sat down on the gound squeezing concrete out like toothpaste. So much for the show. It lasted maybe 45 minutes.
MDOT left. The trucks dumped the their loads to the side of the road and I went home.
I say change the all links in all web pages to M$.com for a day or two! Crush the beast with pebbles......